A city synonymous with hedonism.

Amsterdam.

What does one say about a city dedicated to the art of partying, naked girls, and an all around crazy time? We got off our train at 9:30 am, checked out a few places, and around noon saw our first live sex show--which made me believe that I had just helped fund the illegal sex trade. We were all nervous, telling eachother, "Oh, God, what are we doing here? This is so weird!"--but as the show continued on (and believe me, some of these people you never want to see naked in your life) every single one of us was staring open eyed and mouths open. It wasn't that any of us enjoyed it, in fact, we were probably more disgusted. The creepier part in my opinion was that there were normal older, Dutch men who were sitting alone for this b-rate show, giving me the impression that this was a regular activity for some of them. I was intrigued, and somewhat saddened, by the idea that these people did this on a daily basis to make ends meet. A woman in one of the couples looked a few months pregnant and was wearing a wedding band. I've been particularly bothered by that couple for days now, and I don't know if even in the worst situation, I would be able to do bring myself to such an extent to provide for myself or my family. How does one get in such a bad financial situation that they have to have bad sex with eachother to an audience?

Besides getting my wallet stolen and missing my train connection to Vienna, I really enjoyed Amsterdam. And that wasn't because I'm a 20 year old college student trying to have a fun "eurotrip", but because Amsterdam is actually pretty stimulating culturally. If I had more time to spend there, I really wanted to check out the Anne Frank house exhibit, but it had about a three hour wait and there was really no time to sit in line like that. However, I don't know if I will ever decide to take a trip back there because there are just so many other worthwhile places I'd like to visit in my life, and Amsterdam was good--but its not a place I'd visit multiple times like Paris or Dublin.

One thing I do have to inform everyone about is the food. Sure, theres french fry stands and lots of McDonalds for stoners who are craving munchies, but I actually ate really well and it wasn't even authentic Dutch food (what is authentic Dutch food anyway? Probably more pork like every other country here). Our group happened to find this really nice and relatively inexpensive (considering the large amount of food they gave us) Indonesian restaurant. For about 20 euro a person, they fill your whole table up with tons of different food choices and every single one of them was to die for.

After Mary and I figured out our train situation, we found ourselves with a six hour layover in Frankfurt, Germany. This is a place you cannot pay me to visit. We found an open bar and ended up having a great conversation with the barowner, who was introducing us to some tasty German beers. We were people-watching and I just have to make it known that Frankfurt is home to some of the scariest, ugliest people I have ever seen. Mary was smoking her cigarette when an obviously drugged up man comes over to ask for one. Before she could oblige, the barowner had told him to leave us and his bar alone, causing the man freak out. He started screaming in German and running around in circles until he suddenly pulled out a large crowbar. Just to add a little bit to the extent of his craziness, he stops midway through some of his insults to pull out a bottle of vodka and chugs at least half of it straight. He then goes for the barowner, swinging his crowbar around until finally some police officers take control of the situation.

When things finally calmed down, three drunk Russians who know very little English sit down with us. At first they were nice but once introductions were through, one would not stop trying to touch me, the other wouldn't stop taking photos of us (and we weren't posing, believe me), and the third kept telling me how he'd like to take me on a vacation to Bulgaria or somewhere like that. I'm pretty sure what he meant by "take me on a vacation" was "trick me into being kidnapped and part of the sex trade", because later on they kept telling us we had to go back to their homes with them. We had to switch our seats about three times before the barowner charged them for our beers and then kicked them out.

Oh, and just one more thing: that crazy man with the crowbar was never arrested, they let him walk off. What the hell, Germany?!